Dinner Tonight: Salmon and Pea Tagliatelle Recipe

Salmon and cream is a winning combination, which is why it's such a classic to serve the fish with creamy sauces. Recipes calling for salmon with pasta are also quite common if you look around—the fish has an assertive enough flavor that it takes quite well to chunking into a pasta dish without getting lost. Usually cream is its friendly neighbor to add the needed richness. So I was eager to see how this recipe from Delicious. magazine would fare, which replaces cream with yogurt to lighten things up.

Seriously, I'll probably never go back to cream again. While I expected the yogurt in this recipe to be thin and tart, it instead played wonderfully off the already-rich salmon, pretty much disappearing into the dish and complementing just enough so that you hardly notice it's there. I didn't miss the cream at all. Shallots simmered in vegetable stock create a nice base of flavor, and the fresh peas are lovely and fresh and Spring-y. If at all possible, seek out fresh pasta for this since the tender tagliatelle is wonderful in this dish.

Directions

Bring a pot of salty water to boil. Cook the pasta until al dente if dried, tender if fresh.

2.

Meanwhile, in a second skillet or small pot, bring the stock to a boil and add the shallots, peas, and salt and black pepper to taste. Cook until the peas are tender, longer if fresh.

3.

In the meantime, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, then cook the salmon skin-side up until 3/4 cooked through. Flip and finish cooking. The skin should remove easily from the fish. Discard the skin and flake the salmon gently.

4.

Drain the pasta and return to its cooking pot. Add the yogurt along with the pea mixture and the chopped parsley. Toss well to combine, then stir in the salmon chunks. Divide into bowls and serve immediately.

This Recipe Appears In

Born and raised in Chicago, one of Blake's earliest food memories was a Chicago-style hot dog with all the toppings. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.

As a co-founder of The Paupered Chef And a Serious Eats Contributor since the beginning, Blake has been writing about food regularly since 2006. He currently contributes weekly to Dinner Tonight and writes the Chicago-based column Sausage City. He studied professional cookery at Kendall College in Chicago, and is creative director of Jamco Creative, an outfit in Chicago that specializes in social media marketing.

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